Physical Development following are the causes of or typical Adolescent behaviour:
During the adolescent years, most children experience the growth spurt i.e. a rapid increase in height and weight. Accompanied by this growth spurt is the rapid development of reproductive organs that signal sexual maturity.
Due to these changes, an adolescent becomes conscious of the physical body changes taking place. They are characterised by long arms and limbs. As they are in the state of transition their body proportion have not attained maturity, they sometime feel awkward and uncomfortable on looking at themselves. They are worried about their looks due to manifested physical changes and also fear about the opinion and the reactions of their peers and adults.
Children tend to show variation in entering the puberty growth spurt. Some children attain puberty earlier and some lag behind. There are various reasons for this such as nutrition, heredity and environment.
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These differences mean that some individuals who may have first entered puberty may mature before others of the same age. The early mature begin to feel uncomfortable among the peers and late mature are also worried about their identity in the group. If a child lags behind then he tends to be bullied by his peers and is treated as a small child by his clan.
Adolescents also need to adjust to their bodily changes and have to grow into a new individual. In all these circumstances, the child tends to become over conscious and is in a state of dilemma. He suffers from anxiety which develops after a period of frequent and intense worry that undermines children’s self-confidence and predisposes them to generalised feelings of inadequacy.
Anxiety may be expressed in readily recognisable behaviour such as depression, nervousness, irritability, mood swings, restless sleep, quick anger and extra ordinary sensitivity to what others say or do. Anxious children are unhappy because they feel insecure.
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According to the Piaget’s theory of cognitive development, the adolescent is placed in the formal operations stage of development, which is marked by the beginning of logical and abstract thinking. This means that the adolescents can visualise about concepts that have little no basis in concrete reality.
They are capable of forming multiple hypotheses. This leads the adolescent to think beyond concrete reality and he begins to visualise things from various perspectives. The transition from concrete to abstract thinking allows the adolescent to translate ideas and understand the consequences of actions in ways not possible for them before.
These enhanced abilities also lead to a rapid accumulation of knowledge that opens up a range of issues and problems.
Thus, the adolescents begin to challenge everything, and want to experiment with new things. They tend to become argumentative and stubborn.
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Erik Erikson in his theory of ‘psychosocial development’ places adolescent in the fifth stage, which is a transitional stage from childhood to adulthood. Like any other stage of psychosocial development, psychological development of individual (their personalities and view of themselves) proceeds hand in hand with the social relations they establish as they go through life.
During adolescence individuals face a crisis of identity and role confusion. They pay great attention on how other people
view them. They experiment with roles. They attempt to find out what kind of person they are and they adapt the characteristics of other people to see if their characteristics fit them.
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Adolescent behaviour is characterised by egocentrism and autonomy. The physical changes coupled with the new thinking abilities, make them over conscious and they tend to become self-centered. As the adolescents begin to socialize, they desire autonomy that should be emotional, behavioural and of values.
According to Erikson if an individual is able to come out of crisis successfully he sees himself as an unique and integrated person i.e. he visualises himself in high self-esteem and is better adjusted to his environment. If he fails to come over the crisis he is in a state of confusion over who and what he really is. He may develop what is called maladjusted personality.